Starting Strength

of the jump – go from elbows-straight directly to slammed-forward. Aim your shoulders at the bar and jam them into it without thinking about raising your elbows, as if there is no step between straight elbows and the rack position.
    Jumping is the key. The power clean is not an arms movement, at all, and if you first learn that a jump with straight arms is the core of the movement, you will never learn to arm-pull the bar. The jump generates the upward movement of the bar, and later, when your form is good, you will think of the jump as an explosion at the top of the pull. For now, just jump and slam the bar onto the shoulders. Each time, be sure that 1) you start from the jumping position with the bar touching the thighs and your elbows straight, 2) you actually jump, and 3) you rack the bar with your elbows up high. Check the position of the bar as it passes your chest: it should be close enough that it touches your shirt.
    During this process, you will find that your hands get tired, so rest them as needed. Check your eye gaze direction, too – on the floor 12–15 feet in front of you, not straight down and not up at the ceiling – because this important detail can get lost in the process. It is not productive to let fatigue interfere with concentration and good form. Take the time necessary to go through this critical process properly.

    Figure 6-14. The three basic positions in the power clean: the hang position, the jumping position, and the rack position.

    When you are consistently producing a good jump and rack, you are essentially doing the “clean” part of the power clean. The remaining task is to get the bar from the position it would occupy loaded on the floor, up to the place on the thighs where the jump starts. This part is nothing more than tacking a deadlift onto the movement. It can be made more complicated than this, but it is not productive to do so. The process of tacking the deadlift on starts at the top and proceeds stepwise down to the floor. We will do it in three pieces.
    With the bar close, elbows straight, and arms rotated in, slide the bar down to the jumping position and then do the jump and catch. This is the first step, and you’ve already done it several times now.
    The second step is to lower the bar to a point just below the bottom of the kneecaps. Unlock your knees, shove your hips back, and slide the bar down to a point just below the bottom of the patellas, in the middle of the patellar tendon, above the top of the tibias. Slide the bar down by driving your hips back, driving your shoulders forward, and keeping your knees just a little unlocked. The bar never loses contact with the thighs on the way down, and you might need to think about pushing it back into your thighs so that it doesn’t lose contact. The weight will be over the mid-foot with your shoulders out in front of the bar, again with straight elbows . It is tempting to unlock the elbows as the bar slides down the thighs – perhaps the tendency is to “cock the spring” on the way down before the jump? – but force them to stay straight. Your chest should stay up and your low back should stay locked in position.
    From this position just below the patellas, slowly slide the bar back up to the jumping position, jump, and catch the bar in the rack position. The jump will happen when the bar reaches the place on the thighs that you will now recognize as the jumping position. When it reaches this spot, the slow slide turns into a jump without any pause; it will be as though the bar has touched a trigger that trips the jump into an explosion without any hesitation at the point of firing. During the entire movement, the bar must stay on the thighs, touching the actual surface of the legs as it moves down and up, until the jump. The elbows must remain straight during this sliding along the thighs; they do not bend until after the jump.
    The second step is the hardest one because it is the transition between the two phases of the pull: the deadlift part and the clean part. It is the step that causes the most trouble because the clean is just a jump and a catch, and the deadlift involves nothing more than pulling the bar straight up at arms’ length. This transition phase will be where you make the common mistakes that occur in a power clean: the elbows will bend before you jump, or you will slow down or stop the pull before you jump and catch. Maybe you’ll do both. Keep your elbows straight by maintaining your